For, when I was a
little girl, we always had logs of wood blazing in an open fireplace,
and so did many other people, and coal was just coming into use for
fuel. What should we have done, if everybody had kept on burning wood to
this day? There would have been scarcely a tree left standing; for think
of all the locomotives and engines in factories, besides all the fires
in houses and churches and schoolhouses. But God knew that we should
have need of other fuel besides wood, and so he made great forests to
grow on the earth before he had made any men to live upon it. These
forests were of trees, different in some ways from those we have now,
great ferns as tall as this house, and mosses as high as little trees,
and palm-leaves of enormous size. And, when they were all prepared, he
planned how they should best be stored up for the use of his children,
who would not be here to use them for many thousand years to come. So he
let them grow and ripen and fall to the ground, and then the great rocks
were piled above them to crowd them compactly together, and they were
heated and heavily pressed, until, as the ages went by, they changed
slowly into these hard, black, shining stones, and became better fuel
than any wood, because the substance of wood was concentrated in them.
Then the hills were piled up on top of it all; but here and there some
edge of a coal-bed was tilted up, and appeared above the ground. This
served for a hint to curious men, to make them ask "What is this?" and
"What is it good for?" and so at last, following their questions, to
find their way to the secret stores, and make an open doorway, and let
the world in.
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